


(a)drift

by patrokla



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: M/M, Post-Episode: s02e10 This Is Not For Tears, Repression, and by 'repression' i mean 'tom wambsgans is a mess', could be read as platonic or pre-slash depending on how invested in tom wambsgans' happiness you are, he thinks he's nora helmer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:40:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28094790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrokla/pseuds/patrokla
Summary: He’s mid-spiral when the ringing finally gives way to Greg muttering, “Uh, hey, hi, Tom, this isn’t actually the best time -““You fucking snake,” Tom says, which is not exactly what he’d planned on saying, but it’s a good enough start, “you traitorous little snake in the grass, what the fuck do you think you’re up to, ignoring my calls?”“I - is that the only thing you’re mad about?” Greg asks, sounding absurdly hopeful. “Because honestly, dude, the calls thing wasn’t personal. I’m just like, a bit overwhelmed at the moment?”or, Tom sees Greg at the press conference. He has questions.
Relationships: Greg Hirsch & Tom Wambsgans
Comments: 3
Kudos: 29





	(a)drift

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working away at a couple Kendall/Stewy(/Rava) fics, when out of nowhere I had the need to write about Tom and Greg post-s2 finale. So here we are.
> 
> Epigraph from Frank O'Hara's poem "Morning." My apologies, as always, to Mr. O'Hara.
> 
> You can find me on [tumblr](https://leguin.tumblr.com/), where I'm having A Time.

_i’ll not be cordial_   
_there is nothing that_   
_distracts me_   
  
_do you know how it is_   
_when you are the only_   
_passenger_

—

It’s not really a gay thought so much as an objective observation of Tom’s that Greg has a sort of youthful, hypnotic beauty to him, one that Tom sometimes finds himself resentful of. He’s keenly aware that Greg is taller and younger than him, his skin carrying just a little of that smooth sheen of hereditary wealth that never seems to rub off on Tom. It’s been a great reassurance that Greg would be lost in every other regard without him, wearing all the wrong things and totally unaware of corporate power dynamics. Greg might be a Roy, but only enough of one to get his foot in the door - he needs Tom for everything else.

So it’s quite distressing, really, to see Greg standing there on television, the right hand man in a coup he hadn’t had the courtesy to tell Tom about, carrying papers Tom had twice ordered him to destroy, and all that while wearing a tailored suit that _Tom_ had bought for him. 

It’s galling, is what it is, and Tom finds himself picking up his phone to call Greg - whose contact info is on speed dial, very reasonably seeing as how he’s meant to be Tom’s assistant - without even a conscious thought, just bitter anger fueling the motion. Unsurprisingly, Greg, who is still on live television, does not pick up.

—

In the end, he has to call Greg a total of 24 times before getting through. That’s an unacceptable number of times to have to call one’s assistant - although over the two hours that he sits in his and Shiv’s cabin, jabbing at the call button, rolling his eyes at the busy signal, hanging up the call, contemplating the imminent end of his life as he knows it, and then pressing the call button again, he comes to terms with the facts that Greg is almost certainly no longer his assistant, and that firing papers for the both of them have likely already been drawn up by Waystar Royco’s lawyers.

He’s mid-spiral with that particular thought when the ringing finally gives way to Greg muttering, “Uh, hey, hi, Tom, this isn’t actually the best time -“

“You fucking snake,” Tom says, which is not exactly what he’d planned on saying, but it’s a good enough start, “you traitorous little snake in the grass, what the fuck do you think you’re up to, ignoring my calls?”

“I - is that the only thing you’re mad about?” Greg asks, sounding absurdly hopeful. “Because honestly, dude, the calls thing wasn’t personal. I’m just like, a bit overwhelmed at the moment?”

Tom considers, for half a second, whether the calls _are_ the only thing he’s mad about. For a quarter second he actually thinks they might be, but then he remembers:

“No, you gangly fuck, of course that’s not the only thing I’m mad about. Why didn’t you warn me that you were about to torpedo the family fucking yacht on live television?”

His voice cracks a little at the end there, which is just unacceptable, but luckily Greg doesn’t seem to notice.

“I really would’ve,” Greg says, “it’s just, it was sort of a spur of the moment thing? I don’t think Kendall even knew he was going to do it until like ten minutes before we landed, and then everything was moving so fast…”

He sounds earnest enough, and Tom can picture the way his face looks as he says the words, very round and pale, like the moon, with two big, brown, crater-y eyes in the middle. It’s the face of a person whose default setting is ‘earnest’; the thought occurs to Tom that not interrogating that earnestness more is probably what got him into this mess.

“What about the papers, Greg, the fucking papers we burned? You’re telling me that you just _happened_ to have those papers on you when you went to escort Kendall to the gallows? The one thing that could save him?”

“I mean, yes? I thought about what you said, with keeping the papers at work -“ 

“Oh Christ,” Tom interjects, rolling his eyes.

“- and I thought,” Greg says, rudely speaking over him, “since we were going out on the open ocean and everything, maybe the smart move would be to bring them with me? So I put them in my shoes.”

Tom doesn’t even know how to respond to that. He’s agog. Aghast. His whole career has been brought down by a man-shaped weasel keeping top secret documents inside his fungus-infested shoes, which, now that he thinks about it -

“Next to your feet? Greg, that’s disgusting!”

“I mean, I was wearing socks,” Greg says. He sounds a little sheepish, which is finally enough to ground Tom and let him get ahold of himself. 

“We’ve gotten off topic,” Tom says sternly. “You’re meant to be explaining why you betrayed us all.”

The line goes quiet for a while, quiet enough that Tom can hear the waves lapping at the yacht through the open porthole. The last rays of sunlight are casting shadows across the bed, striping Tom’s legs. It strikes him that most people would kill to be where he is right now. Well, he’s known for a while that most people are fools.

“To be honest, Tom,” Greg finally says, “it wasn’t that hard.”

“Oh.” Tom finds he has to push the word out past an inexplicable lump in his throat. “I see.”

“It’s just, you heard them all this morning,” Greg says, picking up steam, “they were ready to throw us to the sharks with like, no hesitation. Plus, I’m kinda realizing that Uncle Logan is not really a great guy? So when Kendall asked me if I still had the papers, it just seemed like a no brainer.”

He pauses, then says, a little more softly, “I really am sorry, Tom.”

“Yeah, well,” Tom says. ‘Still’ brings up a lot of questions, but he doesn’t think he can stomach the bluntly honest answers he might get in reply.

The line goes quiet again for long enough that Tom starts to wonder if this is it, the last conversation he’ll ever have with Greg. It feels like a waste, although he’s not sure why since Greg has never been a sparkling conversationalist. Still, the feeling drives him to break the silence with a sort of hum, and then say:

“I think Shiv and I are getting a divorce.”

“Oh, wow,” Greg says, with characteristic eloquence. “Is that - how do you feel about it?”

How does he feel about it? The most honest answer would be that he doesn’t think it’s really possible to sort out things like feelings on this yacht, with the current state of the world being how it is. He needs time, and space, and maybe a wide open field to scream in for a few hours. Then he might have some idea.

But that’s not the kind of thing he can just say to people, even Greg, so instead he snaps, “How do I _feel_? Not great, Greg! How would _you_ feel?”

“Well,” Greg says, “if I were in your, um, your position, I might go so far as to be relieved, maybe?”

“Obviously I’m _relieved_ ,” Tom says, his attempts at keeping a lid on any of it failing completely. “I was miserable, Greg. God, I was horribly miserable. Terribly unhappy. It was like living in an Ibsen play. But, you know, I still - I still wanted to make it work.”

“I get that,” Greg says quietly, “I mean, I understand. My parents -“ he stops, then starts again. “I think it could be a good thing. All of this.”

Tom gets up from the bed, and goes to look out the porthole, wobbling as he discovers just how asleep his feet are.

“Yeah, maybe,” he mutters, watching the sun slip totally below the horizon. The sky is turning a deep, bruised purple. He thinks he can hear people arguing on the deck above him, but he doesn’t care to pick out the voices. It’s strangely nice to be irrelevant to all of that strategizing, nicer than he could’ve predicted.

“I don’t want to like, cut you off if you need to talk more,” Greg says hesitantly, “but I kind of need to call my mom? And like, a lot of other people after that. Also, I think my phone might die soon.”

“Greg, you can just hang up,” Tom says, faintly amused. “I can’t exactly fire you for it.”

“If you’re sure,” Greg says. To his credit, he does sound genuinely concerned, like he really would be willing to keep listening as Tom details exactly how his life has fallen to pieces. He’s a better actor than Tom assumed.

“I’ll be fine,” Tom says. “Us Wambsgans always land on our feet.”

“Ha, right,” Greg says. “Well, um. Take care, I guess. And if you need a place to stay - “

“I don’t think that would be appropriate,” Tom says, although he’s not actually sure why it wouldn’t be, now.

“Well, if you do,” Greg presses. “Just…I think Mondale is pretty cool, so. That wouldn’t be a problem.”

Before Tom can even think of how to reply to that, Greg quickly follows it up with, “Bye, Tom,” and then the line goes dead.

As soon as it does, Tom feels a low level of irritation and panic rise in him again, one he hadn’t even realized had mostly disappeared in the last few minutes of the call. God, fuck Greg for bringing up practical concerns like finding a new place to live. He’s not in any state to resolve that right now.

Honestly, he’s half-expecting one of the security guys to show up at any moment and escort him off the yacht - hopefully in one of those little lifeboats back to the mainland, but possibly just right into the ocean. 

Of course, there’s always a chance that Shiv will show up instead and want to kiss and make up. Maybe tomorrow morning the whole day will seem like a bad dream, and he’ll have everything he had yesterday. Maybe he’ll even want it all again like he did then.

Either way, none of it feels particularly up to him. He’s made his move, and he’s not about to go provoke a yacht full of Roys into reacting to it, unlike _some_ people. For now, he has nothing to do but stand there with an uncomfortably warm phone clutched in his hand and wait. 

He wonders how difficult it would be to dog-proof Greg’s apartment.


End file.
